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The Parks, Peaks, and Prairies Bicycle Route fulfills the request of so many cyclists visiting the ACA headquarters in Missoula for a northern connector between the TransAmerica Trail and the Northern Tier Bicycle Route — one that strings together the iconic American parks of Yellowstone, Devils Tower, Mt. Rushmore, Badlands, and the famous Black Hills of South Dakota.
But don’t expect the connection to come easily! Located nearly smack dab in the middle are the compact, yet formidable Black Hills. This small mountain range exhibits a network of rollercoasting, winding roads that can frequently rise to 10% grades for short durations.
Many of these same roads are very popular for motorcyclists, especially in August for the world’s largest motorcycle rally centered in the nearby town of Sturgis. Roads and crowds notwithstanding, the Black Hills offers scenery and grandeur on a scale that may be surprising to the conventional out-of-state visitor.
The route begins in the gateway community of West Yellowstone, Montana and ends in the “City of Lakes” — Minneapolis, Minnesota. After riding 2.3 miles in Montana, the route enters Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park, which is renowned as America’s first national park. The route meanders past numerous geothermal hotspots, plunging waterfalls, and idyllic valleys teaming with wildlife.
From a Wall Street Journal online article:
Patricia McNeal, a 58-year-old brain-aneurysm survivor from Panama City, Fla., is currently riding home from Seattle on her 2017 Trek Émonda SL 6 road bike. She’s improvising a route, but confessed she’d one day love to ride the Great American Rail Trail, a transcontinental route from Washington, D.C. to Washington state that’s now in piecemeal development.
A self-described “credit-card camper,” Ms. McNeal doesn’t rough it. She carries a single bag and sleeps at hotels and homestays arranged via warmshowers.org, a peer-to-peer cyclist’s site, as well as supporters who learn about her travels via the Black Girls Do Bike organization. Her necessities are padded shorts, a gel seat, chamois cream to help with chafing and some music.
Bicycle touring in America is shifting gears away from that old school derring-do on skinny tires, when cyclists scraped by 18-wheelers on highways. Instead, the sort of protected cycling paths common in urban centers are now stretching tendrils over abandoned railroad lines to link cities coast-to-coast. Meanwhile, riders are joining mass multiday fundraising rides for safety in numbers, or taking to America’s 1,357,430 miles of quieter unpaved roads. For that, they ride increasingly popular “gravel bikes,” a toughened road bike designed for speed on off-road with added mounts for gear.
To read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-right-bicycles-for-an-epic-ride-across-america-11573235337
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